For Leika Kihara's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
In late January 2016, the lights were on well past midnight on the seventh floor of the Bank of Japan's headquarters. Inside, a handful of bureaucrats were working on a shock plan. It was almost three years into central bank Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda's audacious campaign ...
As years of near-zero interest rates in Japan make traditional lending barely profitable, one regional bank is seeking to drum up business through less conventional enterprises, from opening wine bars to helping fishermen farm sea urchins. The new approach comes as regulators cautiously loosen the ...
From sleepy New Zealand hillsides to sleek Tokyo dining scenes, a bottle of Hawke's Bay wine shipped to Japan traces an arc that exporters like Nigel Avery see as an avenue for multimillion dollar growth built on a free trade pact. Avery's Sileni Estates hopes ...
Despite calls to resist protectionism and for the United States to rejoin a multilateral trans-Pacific trade pact, Japan is gradually shifting gear to adjust to a trade environment shaken up by U.S. President Donald Trump. Japan ramped up its warning over the damage protectionism could ...
Japan will have little choice but to enter into a bilateral trade deal with the United States similar to one President Donald Trump clinched with South Korea, a former top currency diplomat from Japan said. Naoyuki Shinohara, who was also deputy managing director at the ...
The Bank of Japan should consider buying foreign bonds as part of efforts to reflate the economy during Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda's second term at the central bank helm, an economic adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. The BOJ is prohibited by law from buying ...
The prime minister’s economic agenda is shaping up after his election win with a focus on steering firms to hike wages, and with moves to shift fiscal prudence targets.
A flurry of positive Japanese economic indicators bolsters optimism about the world’s No. 3 economy.
Further consolidation among Japan's regional banks is inevitable given the rapidly aging population and ultralow interest rates, according to an adviser to the Financial Services Agency. The Bank of Japan's radical stimulus program, which has pushed interest rates to near or below zero, is severely ...
Naruhito Nogami, a 37-year-old systems engineer in Tokyo, drives to discount stores on weekends to buy cheap groceries in bulk, even though he earns enough to make ends meet and the prospects for Japan's economic recovery are brighter. "I do have money, but I'm frugal ...
